Great Start for Digital Learning Policy in the 113th Congress: Comprehensive Education Technology Bill Introduced in U.S. House of Representatives

Posted on by Hilary Goldmann
2

Today, Congressman George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee introduced the Transforming Education through Technology Act. The introduction of this legislation is an important milestone in digital learning policy.  With no dedicated federal funding over last few years for classroom technology, and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act stalled, the Transforming Education through Technology Act will be a rallying opportunity for the entire education community to highlight and underscore the key role digital learning plays in all aspects of teaching and learning to ensure all students are college and career ready.

“We’re a strong supporter of Congressman Miller’s Transforming Education through Technology Act,” said Brian Lewis, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). “The legislation’s strong focus on professional learning for teachers and administrators is the key to developing and implementing effective and engaging curriculum. Once again, Congressman Miller has taken a leading role on an issue of great importance to all students. His leadership on digital learning policy recognizes that there is an important federal role in ensuring that all students receive an education that prepares them for successful and meaningful lives.”

The Transforming Education through Technology Act has a strong focus on students, teachers and administrators.  Complimenting the ISTE NETS, the purposes of the legislation include, among others, to:

  • Improve the achievement and college-and-career readiness of students who have developed the ability to think critically, apply knowledge to solve complex problems, work collaboratively, communicate effectively, be self-directed and be responsible digital citizens;
  • Ensure all students have access to individualized, rigorous and engaging digital learning experiences;
  • Ensure that educators have the knowledge and skills to develop and implement digital learning curriculum, use technology effectively in order to personalize and strengthen instruction and effectively deliver and utilize assessments to measure student outcomes and support student success;
  • Ensure that administrators have the leadership, management, knowledge and skills to design develop and implement a school or local educational agency-wide digital age learning environment.

ISTE joined with several education organizations releasing a joint press statement in support of the Transforming Education through Technology Act.  The organizations are:  Alliance for Excellent Education (Alliance), American Association of School Administrators (AASA), Association of Education Service Agencies (AESA), Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition (NREAC), National Rural Education Association (NREA),  the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) and the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

Here are links to Representative Miller’s Press statement, the complete legislation, the fact sheet and bill summary.

Share this:

Posted in Advocacy | 2 Replies

Speak Up 2012 | Make Your Voice Heard

Posted on by ISTE Connects
Reply

by Julie Evans

spacer
Are you “Speaking Up” about ed tech this year? If not, you are missing a unique opportunity to have your views—as well as the views of your colleagues, students, and their parents—included in the increasingly important U.S. national and state discussions on digital learning policies, programs, and funding.

The Speak Up National Research Project annually collects and reports on the authentic, unfiltered views of K–12 students, parents, and educators about critical digital age education and technology issues. The survey questions reflect many of the discussions we have at ISTE’s Annual Conference and Exposition on topics such as mobile learning, flipped classrooms, digital textbooks, virtual and blended learning, games, and social media. Since 2003, more than 2.6 million K–12 education stakeholders have shared their ideas about ed tech through the Speak Up surveys. And we need your ideas too.

ISTE has been an important partner in Speak Up since our first student surveys in 2003. It provides input for our survey questions and uses the data findings for its advocacy efforts. The real value of that data for advocacy, of course, depends on strong participation nationwide by ISTE members.

Why should you participate? “Speaking Up” will ensure that your voice is heard loud and clear in Washington, DC, and in your state capitol about ed tech issues that matter to you.  As a former ISTE Board member, I understand the importance of ed tech advocacy. That is why we annually share the Speak Up national results with policymakers. From the halls of Congress to school board meetings, the Speak Up data is used regularly to inform new programs, initiatives, and budgets.

Participating in Speak Up brings direct value to your school or district as well. Every school or district that participates in Speak Up and promotes the surveys to its students, teachers, administrators, and parents gets a special report from Project Tomorrow with all of its local data in addition to the national data. This report can help you learn about the views of your stakeholders to inform your local decisions and plans.

The Speak Up surveys for students, parents, and educators are open for input through December 21, 2012. To “Speak Up,” simply visit our website at www.tomorrow.org/speakup or contact Jenny Hostert at 949-609-4660 x17 or jhostert@tomorrow.org.

spacer Julie Evans is the CEO of Project Tomorrow and has been a frequent speaker, writer, and advocate for the effective use of technology in learning and teaching for the past 15 years. She is a graduate of Brown University and recently completed a term of service on the ISTE Board’s Executive Committee. In April 2008, eSchool News named Evans one of the Top Ten Most Influential People in Education Technology in the past decade.

Share this:

Posted in Advocacy | Leave a reply

6 Considerations for Education Leaders

Posted on by ISTE Connects
Reply

Guest post by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach 

1. What are some of the biggest challenges facing superintendents, principals, CTOs, curriculum leaders, and tech coordinators today?

spacer I think probably the biggest challenge that leaders in any of these roles face is that we are really living in two worlds now. We’re operating in an outdated system in terms of meeting the needs of 21st century learners, so we have to reimagine who we are as educators and reculture our schools. At the same time we have to meet the requirements of state testing, curriculum standards, and the more traditional responsibilities that come with leading schools and school systems.

It’s a fast and intricate dance that requires very good balance. Superintendents, principals, technology directors and teacher leaders have to figure out how they can gracefully lead faculty and help them understand what they need to know to be effective constructors of learning. And also how to be effective change agents who can stretch learning environments beyond the boundaries of traditional school, so that their iGeneration kids develop the sophisticated skill sets they’ll need to be successful in work and life situations we can barely envision.

Additionally, as leaders, how do we meet mandates and comply with policies that don’t always fit perfectly into the dynamics of a true 21st century school, adapt 20th-century planning processes to the change dynamics of the Google Era, and do it all within budgets that don’t begin to match the price tag of deep transformation?

How do leaders meet this incredible set of challenges? My answer would be the same answer we give to the teachers in our Powerful Learning Practice (PLP) programs who are trying to cope with all this change. We say to them: “If you want to change the way you teach, first you have to change the way you learn.” And I would say to folks in leadership roles: “To be a successful leader in the 21st-century educational environment, you have to become a learner first. You have to be the Lead Learner.”

2. Why is it critical for administrators to take time out for their own professional learning and networking amid their busy schedules?

Leaders need cutting-edge knowledge and skills to be effective. Most leaders in education today began their careers in the classroom. Many entered those classrooms before the dawn of the Internet Age and moved into leadership roles before social media, mobile technologies and virtual learning environments became dominant forces in society.

As a leader, you may need to reinvent yourself professionally. Certainly you have to position yourself as “learner first” and figure out what new skills you must gain to be able to lead other educators through this revolution in teaching and learning to build 21st-century capacities on a large scale within your organization. Michael Fullan, who will be Lead Facilitator at the ISTE Leadership Forum, says the most effective change drivers are not testing, accountability, performance pay, and the like, but initiatives that change the culture of school systems: distributed leadership, collaboration, teamwork—all undergirded by a focus on values, norms, skills, practices, and relationships.

In my book The Connected Educator, I describe a three-pronged professional learning approach for the Digital Age that applies to both teachers and school leaders. Part of the “learner first” mindset for leaders today is to build and engage with a personal learning network, both virtually and face-to-face. Given the impact of technology on everything that has to do with learning, that means attending conferences such as the ISTE Leadership Forum. It’s one of the places where you come into contact with other leaders who not only understand your challenges and aspirations, but who have come to the conclusion that they cannot delegate to others the responsibility for figuring out what it means to learn and teach in a technological society and a connected world.

You really need to have one foot in the future while you try to balance all the challenges you face today. The contacts you make and the insights you gain through your PLN and a well-designed conference such as the ISTE Leadership Forum will make sure that your foot is “out there.”

3. What do you think differentiates this month’s ISTE Leadership Forum in Indianapolis from other educational conferences and professional development opportunities?

The great thing about this conference is that ISTE’s leaders, members, and advisors are constantly thinking about what’s on the change horizon. The conference design grows out of questions such as, “What are the implications of rapid culture shift—driven in very significant ways by technology—for students, learning, teaching, and schools?” And, of course, “What does that mean for education leaders?”

This is not a conference that will teach you how to create a wiki or send you home with little more than the scary message that all this crazy change is going on and schools are being left behind. I’ve served on the conference planning group, and I can say that this is a conference shaped by informed educators who have created an agenda that will provide leaders with information and ideas they can act upon and with opportunities to explore solutions to real problems together.

One of the biggest problems with so many conferences is that however great the experience might be you walk out and that’s the end of it. There’s nothing in the way of follow-up, nothing much that you can take home and put to work right away. The entire ISTE Leadership Forum has been designed to not only bring in thought leaders who talk provocatively about the future, but to then have those thought leaders work directly with participants to build an action plan they can take home.

So whatever you’re involved in at the conference—the consideration of essential conditions, listening to one of the Digital Age panels, any of the content strands—you’re getting ideas and elements that you’ll be able to pull together into an implementable strategy when you re-enter the daily torrent that characterizes the leadership workplace today. ISTE’s leadership conference serves as both catalyst and resource base—the “how” as well as the “why”—and that’s pretty unusual in my experience. As a leader you will walk away with some firm ideas about how you can begin to lead this change back in your local context.

4. You and your PLP co-founder Will Richardson have worked with school and system leaders in several professional learning programs, including the Leading Edge Experience. You have a good idea of what leaders are seeking from professional learning experiences and conferences. How does the ISTE Leadership Forum match up?

I think what busy education leaders are looking for—when they take the time to leave their schools or districts and come to a conference like this—are stimulating ideas. They really want to be able to remix and build on what their colleagues are doing. They want to have some deep conversations with their peers in leadership roles. That’s not easy to do back home and really not that likely to happen, at least in a focused way, at most conferences.

Leaders are looking for opportunities to find out what’s working and what solutions others have found to knotty dilemmas similar to their own challenges. The beauty of the ISTE Leadership Forum design is that it very deliberately creates time for education leaders to talk to each other, not just be talked at. At most conferences, even if they say there will be facilitated conversation, it’s an afterthought or limited to discussion around pre-set themes. ISTE’s goal is not to present a series of one-size-fits-all “solutions” but to create an environment where participants are contextualizing the ideas and working to adapt them to their own unique circumstances.

What leaders really want, as Will and I have seen over and over again in Powerful Learning Practice, is for you to help them gain what they need to begin their own self-directed journey to 21st-century leadership—to consider issues such as change drivers, school and teacher culture, and what’s going to make sense back in their own local schools. If you can help them do that through a facilitated process that also includes lots of access to each other, then you have a great leadership conference.

As part of the Leadership Forum, ISTE is facilitating a wiki that will include the ideas from every single one of the breakout sessions. So not only are you going to be able to pull from ideas in a session you attended, you’ll have access to all these other ideas—to a real peer leader “idea database.” It will be a very rich, thick resource that will help people shape ideas to fit their own local conditions.

5. What are you most looking forward to experiencing at this year’s forum?

I’m excited about Michael Fullan. He’s not just making a speech; he’s serving as the lead facilitator for the ISTE conference and will be working with all the panels and breakout sessions. I’m thrilled about that. We’re going to be up close and personal with one of the truly brilliant minds when it comes to educational leadership, school reform, and large-scale school system change. ISTE’s knowledge about the impact of technology, Fullan’s research-based understanding of how positive change comes about, and the conference design that facilitates peer interaction—it’s a win-win-win.

6. What would like to tell administrators who aren’t familiar with ISTE?

ISTE is a forward-thinking organization led by a group of educators who never lose sight of what all of this is about—student learning and success. ISTE is really on the cutting edge of technological change. None of us know it all, because as we’ve said, the change is taking place at blinding speed. But the people in key leadership positions at ISTE do an amazing job of staying abreast of technology and learning. They constantly reach out for advice and counsel to people like myself and many forward-thinking teachers, principals, instructional leaders, district administrators and others who spend a lot of our time thinking about the implications of all this change. That’s a smart way to lead any organization.

I’d say this to school leader: If you prefer to be involved with organizations that model the Learner First concept, you’ll like ISTE, and I predict you’ll be back for more in the (unknowable) future!

Bio:

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is both an educator and an entrepreneur — co-founder & CEO of  Powerful Learning Practice LLC and a recognized expert in creating, developing and leading highly productive virtual professional communities.

During a 25-year education and business career, Sheryl has been a classroom teacher, technology coach, charter school developer and principal, district administrator, university instructor, digital learning consultant, and leader of a successful professional development company.

Sheryl is the co-author (with Lani Ritter Hall) of The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age (Solution Tree, 2012), which presents a model of learning in online communities. She has been a trainer, speaker, and keynote presenter at workshops and conferences in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Norway, and Belize.

Sheryl served as a key consultant and advisor to the U.S. Department of Education’s Connected Educators initiative and a leader in the development of USDOE’s first Connected Educators Month. She co-founded the K12Online Conference — a free global Web 2.0 professional development opportunity for educators around the world — and led a four-year statewide project in Alabama, funded by Microsoft Partners in Learning, to develop teacher leaders as change agents on behalf of 21st century learning approaches.

Sheryl has worked with more than 7,000 teachers and education leaders in dozens of virtual community environments to create specific work products and accomplish a variety of learning goals. She has also consulted for the American Institutes for Research, the New York State Department of Education, the Virginia State Department of Education, the Center for Teaching Quality, Intel, SchoolNet, Microsoft, IBM, CLNet, and the Alabama Best Practices Center.

Interviews with Sheryl have been published by connected learning thought leader Howard Rheingold, Education Week, Edutopia, the Washington Post Answer Sheet, Partners in Learning, Connected Educators, Media & Social Change, Larry Ferlazzo, and TeachersCount. She’s also published articles in TechEdge, ASCD Express, Tech & Learning, Teacher Magazine, and Access Learning, as well as a book chapter in What School Administrators Need To Know about Digital Technologies and Social Media (Jossey Bass, 2011).

Sheryl is a graduate of Valdosta State University and is completing her doctoral dissertation at the College of William and Mary.

Share this:

Posted in ISTE Leadership Forum | Leave a reply

Get Ready for #ISTELF12!

Posted on by dmersino
Reply

Guest Post by George Couros

spacer On October 21-23, I will be attending the ISTE Leadership Forum in Indianapolis, and am looking forward to moderating a panel on “Connecting. Leading. Learning.”, with some awesome people I have connected with over the last few years. ISTE recently asked me to answer a few questions pertinent to the upcoming forum. Here are my thoughts:

What are some of the biggest challenges facing superintendents, principals, CTOs, curriculum leaders, and tech coordinators today?

spacer

I think that there are a couple of issues.  With needs going up, but budgets either being decreased or kept the same, it is hard to provide the accessibility to students that they will need to be successful in our time and in their future.  With that being said, we have to really take a look at not only how we lead our schools, but also how the management of our resources ties in with the vision for our school.

The other issue that I see is that many organizations have no idea where to start as there are so many opportunities in the use of technology. This often overwhelms many people.  What we need to do as leaders is figure out “why” we do what we do, and then figure out the technology that will serve the learning needs of our community.  Simply buying a bunch of devices is not a good idea; we have to be thoughtful in how we not only implement our plans, but also develop people in our organizations to give them all of the opportunities for success.

So yes, there are issues, but with thoughtful leadership, we can definitely move forward in what we do to ensure that we do what is best for kids.

Why is it critical for administrators to take time out for their own professional learning and networking amid their busy schedules?

I am not sure that we have to look at it as “taking time out of our schedules”, but
I feel it is about rethinking the way we do our work, not necessarily adding something new.sometimes rethinking the way we do our work and what our priorities are.  I think that as a leader, taking the time to reflect on what I have done is key to what I will do in the future and how successful our organization will be.  This is something that I make time for during my week to ensure that it gets done.  We all take time for professional development and I see connecting through social media is something that I can do sporadically throughout my day while in my school, where as “traditional” professional development actually pulls me entirely out of my school as well.

What do you think differentiates this month’s ISTE Leadership Forum in Indianapolis from other educational conferences and professional development opportunities?

What I like most about this opportunity is that it’s being delivered (mostly) by education leaders, who are still affiliated directly with schools.  It is important that we connect with thought leaders in education as well as other areas of the world, but I want to hear from the people that are in the trenches, doing the work.  It gives a lot of credibility to what they are saying and I think that it shows that many of the
What are you personally most looking forward to experiencing at this year’s forum?innovative practices happening right now in schools are attainable. Seeing someone like Chris Lehmann speak who is doing the work gives me the opportunity to be inspired, but also believe that we can push forward for our students as well.

Connecting with people that I have met virtually.  That is the power of things like Twitter and Facebook; it gives us the opportunity to connect with real people at these conferences and get right into the deep conversations that will help us improve the work we do for our students.  The deeper the conversation, the better it is for all of us.  I am hoping that many from this conference take the opportunity to connect with others and keep connecting up after the conference.  One-shot professional development doesn’t work; we have to use social media to keep the conversation going.

 

George Couros is a division principal of innovative teaching and learning with Parkland School Division, located in Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada. He is a passionate learner, an ed tech advocate, and motivator.

Share this:

Posted in ISTE Leadership Forum | Leave a reply

Supercharge your career and classroom; enter ISTE’s Pinterest contest!

Posted on by bhartford
Reply

How will you power up for the school year? Show us to win a prize!

ISTE is launching a contest for the growing community of educators using Pinterest to support educational advancement through technology. We’re asking you to create your own “Supercharged with ISTE” board on Pinterest to share how you will “supercharge” your classroom. Show us what kind of edtech resources you’ll use to empower your career and your classroom in the school year ahead.

Hurry! Contest ends October 17, 2012.